The songs that I like are the ones that you can’t visualize, that are just cries from the heart – those very straight, direct songs that make rock & roll music so wonderful.
I love rock-n-roll. I think it’s an exciting art form. It’s revolutionary. Still revolutionary and it changed people. It changed their hearts. But yeah, even rock-n-roll has a lot of rubbish, really bad music.
The band is a living, breathing thing. It grows in the same way we do as human beings and if it doesn’t, it dies. It’s important to feed the organism, and one way of doing that is to set musical challenges that keep it alive.
The writer who refuses to explore the darker regions of the heart will never be able to write convincingly about the wonder, the magic and the joy of love for just as goodness cannot be trusted unless it has breathed the same air as evil.
We are still struggling with people who don’t feel comfortable going into museums. As a visual artist I ask how artists can be part of enacting a change.
When I’m singing “Deanna,” for example, which I sing pretty much every night, it brings forward a kind of imagined, romanticized lie about this particular person, which I find really comforting and exciting to sing about.
I’m very happy to hear that my work inspires writers and painters. It’s the most beautiful compliment, the greatest reward. Art should always be an exchange.
I am not interested in anything that doesn’t have a genuine heart to it. You’ve got to have soul in the hole. If that isn’t there, I don’t see the point.
